Another Tough Evening

Writers: Avery
Date Posted: 18th October 2017

Characters: Riveenata
Description: The greenrider has been out of sorts lately.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 13, day 24 of Turn 8
Notes: Mentioned: R'kehr

Riveenata sat on Savith's ledge, swinging her feet over the edge. The
green dragon was curled up asleep at one end. She watched sunset colors
streak the sky, filling it with rich pinks and yellows and oranges. It was
a beautiful view, a fine ending to a perfectly normal day that had gone
perfectly well. It was the kind of view that Riveenata should have been
drinking in, not trying to commit it to memory, but trying to simply
experience the beauty of the moment and take her peace where she could.

It was the kind of thing that she would have genuinely been appreciating
and finding peace in. Two months ago. Before what had happened to River
Bluff.

The old Riveenata would have been genuinely appreciating it. Maybe she
would have been sitting here with someone, enjoying it in silence, or
talking quietly before switching to making out instead. Maybe she'd have
been walking along the beach with friends.

The old Riveenata wouldn't have been sitting up here, alone in her weyr,
stewing in her own complicated mix of emotions, and completely ignoring
the view.

But right now, that's what she was doing.

She'd been feeling a complicated mix of emotions ever since the disaster
at River Bluff. Hadn't everyone who'd lived through it? They'd all lost
wingmates, friends, family - everyone knew _someone_ who'd died, and
everyone had lost something that belonged to them in the rockfall and the
waves. The Weyr itself had been its own kind of person, a place that
belonged to each individual and to everyone, a presence in their lives. It
was natural to feel grief over its loss.

She felt a gaping ache inside whenever she thought of River Bluff. Her
chest tightened and she felt like she couldn't breathe. The way sometimes
she thought about home and tears poured down her cheeks and she got a
headache from it. Or sometimes she thought about it and she wanted to
throw things at a wall and scream and break things because the anger was
just so strong.

It's just that Riveenata knew that she was feeling the wrong _kind_ of
grief. She'd lost the place she grew up, yes, seeing it reduced to rubble
before her eyes. She'd been picked up and transplanted to Dolphin Cove
with the rest of her family to resettle somewhere she'd only visited for
reference points.

But - she still had her family. None of them had died. None of her very
closest friends had died.

So while she knew people who had died - as they all did - she didn't
deserve to feel loss as strong as this.

Not when other people had lost so much more, and they were still fine. She
wasn't supposed to have trouble holding herself together or to feel like
she was a completely different person from the self before the disaster.
Because really, all she'd lost was her home and nothing else.

The pain and loss were weighing heavily on her, but it was the guilt over
feeling it that was truly wracking her.

And the result was that she isolated herself. She went to wing drills, she
flew Threadfall, she performed her appointed infirmary duties. That was
work and she could handle it. She could try to buckle down and soldier her
way through that.

But when it came to socializing? It just wasn't happening anymore unless
she was dragged into it. She saw her parents and siblings when they
insisted on family meal-nights. She had caught meals with new wingmates or
with old River Bluff friends. It wasn't like she hadn't left her weyr
except for work.

But all of those had happened when she was asked to do them by someone
else. She wasn't lingering longer in the Dining Cavern or wing meetings to
spend time with people, or initiating seeing other people on her own. Not
like she'd been doing since Impressing to Savith. She wasn't even hanging
around the periphery of big gatherings like she used to.

She was isolated because it felt hard to try to put on a good face when
she was hurting. And she didn't deserve to hurt like this because it
wasn't that bad for her.

She was broken out of the reverie by Savith twitching her tail, lifting up
her head slightly, and blinking. }:Thadath's wishes to know if you want to
get a meal and scrub his back.:{

Riven snorted to herself. She knew what R'kehr meant by that. It was a
reasonably polite way of asking about spending the night together. He
wasn't shy about expressing what he wanted. But he was a gentleman, and if
she took him up on the food and bath but didn't want anything else, he
never made her feel uncomfortable about that. There was a reason she liked
him.

But...she just wasn't feeling the company. Not tonight. "Tell him I'm too
tired, but thanks."

Savith relayed it to the other dragon. In a bit, she told her rider,
}:Thadath says his rider says that you should go to the event with him
because he misses you.:{

Right. There was going to be that event. A welcome party. She'd planned to
skip it, even though as a weyr-wide event she'd see lots of her friends
and also get a chance to meet new people. But if she skipped it, that
would be noticed. So she probably should go.

"Tell him I'll see him then," she said.

It was...tomorrow? The next day? Sometime this sevenday. She could figure
out how to put on a smile by then. She hoped.

Last updated on the November 2nd 2017

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Another Tough Evening